Salad crops

Save a fortune with your own ‘bistro’ mixes

Leaves. Bits of hedge. Fancy salad leaves don’t go down well with my family, but they’re one of the priciest things you buy at the supermarket. It’s a shame, as they’re so easy to grow, almost all year.

If you’re after perfect, full-hearted traditional lettuce, then you’re better off growing them in a raised bed or border, but cut-and-come-again seed mixes are perfect for containers, so you don’t even need a garden.

I have one of Suttons Stacks of Flavour boxes – a selection of treated wooden boxes that are sadly no longer available. However, you can buy similar boxes elsewhere or improvise your own with reclaimed pallets or grocer’s boxes.

As leaf salad is so quick to grow, a shallow box like this is ideal – you can also move it to somewhere partially shady if the weather is scorching – lettuce doesn’t like extreme heat and it can inhibit germination.

The compost gets exhausted quickly, so replace it with each fresh batch of leaves – it doesn’t take much filling.

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Mandy Watson is a freelance journalist and an incurable plantaholic. MandyCanUDigIt grew from the tiny seed of a Twitter account into the rainforest of information you see now. Gardening columnist (Sunderland Echo, Shields Gazette, Hartlepool Mail), Teesdale Mercury Magazine editor. Attracted by the rebellious, exotic and nerdy. Passionate about northern England and gardens everywhere. Falls over a lot.